Cash flow refers to the movement of cash over a particular time period within a business or enterprise. The calculation of cash flow may be used as one measure to gauge financial health of the business. Managers in charge of cash flow management may use various tools to assist in making decisions involving cash flow including cash recyclers which allow a retail establishment to maintain and re-use an amount of currency on-site. The cash recycler may further calculate and manage use of cash flows in real-time.
While cash recyclers allow a business to manage their cash flows in a more seamless manner, cash recyclers often require an individual to manually remove cash from the cash recycler and place it into a cash drawer or till for use in a cash register or other point of sale device. In addition, conventional systems often require that each withdrawal of currency for the cash drawer or till be requested individually and/or by keying in the number and denomination of the currency requested for each individual drawer. This process can be inefficient, time consuming and may pose a security threat because of individuals handling currency. In addition, it is possible that multiple tills or cash drawers would not have the same amount of currency at the start of a shift or day due to error in distributing the currency to the cash drawer or till. Any time funds are inaccurately credited or debited to a particular drawer, there will likely be problems reconciling that drawer at a later point. Currently, it is a time consuming process for corporate accounting, store managers, and/or cashiers to resolve these reconciliation discrepancies. Accordingly, providing an automated, reliable, duplicative means of distributing currency to one or more cash drawers or tills would be advantageous.
Further, conventional systems often require a user to manually remove currency and/or coin from a cash drawer or till in order to count the cash and/or reconcile the drawer. This process can be time consuming and prone to errors, theft, etc. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an automatic system for counting cash in a cash drawer, removing cash from the cash drawer and/or reconciling cash in the cash drawer.